


North Pacific Ocean 21.530938, -144.701169

by wildechilde17



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Angst, F/M, Nicknames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: Clintasha Advent Calendar Day Eight : Affection





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bettybackintheday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bettybackintheday/gifts), [september_again](https://archiveofourown.org/users/september_again/gifts), [staurtvalois](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staurtvalois/gifts), [Klyntaliah](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Klyntaliah).



It isn’t a nickname at first, it isn’t affectionate in any way.

The girl in the coat too large for her frame and the eyes that saw him on a rooftop calls him ястреб when she surrenders to him.  It isn’t much of a surrender as surrenders go, more of a détente and he knows that if he moves too fast, says the wrong thing, even hints at a plan other than one she has agreed to, she will be in the wind.

She calls him ястреб as he says he works for SHIELD.  She eyes the bow he holds on her and the arrows at his back and she calls him ястреб like she has wondered who would come for her and she had learned all their names. 

He wonders if she is ever glad that it was the hawk that found her in the end or if she only feels indebted. 

It isn’t a nickname when he hears it again spat across a sealed room.

“Ястреб,” she spits shaking like she is withdrawing from benzos.  She tells him to leave.  She tells him to kill her and that is the little he can make out from her frantic Russian and the host of languages she begins speaking.

He’s told to leave; he’s ordered to leave.

He doesn’t leave.

She is not even two decades into life as near as they can tell, and so full of triggers and memory modifications he sometimes hears the Psychs saying she might never be fit for active duty even if she means to change teams.

He doesn’t tell them that they are fucking nuts themselves if they think the girl that ran from the red room full of triggers and memory modifications would fail to fight her way through.

She is not even two decades into life and he knows she’s a fighter and there is something very precious at the core of her. 

It isn’t a nickname, it’s an insult.

And then it disappears entirely from her vocabulary.

At first he is Barton, the partner who was forced on her.  At first he is only Barton, the sticky reminder that she isn’t trusted and that in this new life she begins with a debt. 

Then he is Hawkeye, a code name but one she appears to trust. She is beginning to trust herself too. She speaks up.  She argues. She stops running the show.

One night on an island off the coast of Norway he becomes Clint.  He tells her she is his friend and he knows now that she has never had a friend before. 

She wakes up from a medically induced coma and does not wake him. She lets him wake himself to find her starring, her green eyes unreadable, at his drooling face.

“ ‘tasha?” he says, the dryness in his throat cutting off the first syllable of her name

“I hit my head, ястреб” she says softly

And it is not an insult. 

 


End file.
